The concept of inventory management has been applied to various types of products by numerous systems. Among these are “point of sale” systems that are common within supermarkets. Typically, “point of sale” systems are used to inventory products offered for sale that are identified with an identifiable indicia, such as a bar code. Upon being purchased, the bar code for the product is scanned and the purchase is recorded. Additionally, the “point of sale” system inventories the products once they are purchased and itemizes the number of each individual product item that is sold for accounting purposes. “Point of sale” systems also provide assistance in accounting and taxes. While “point of sale” systems are useful for keeping inventory of products that can be individually scanned upon the sale of the product, the usefulness of “point of sale” systems is limited to stores that move through inventory in relatively large numbers. In terms of inventory management, the usefulness of “point of sale” systems is limited to products that can be scanned at the time of purchase in order to perform inventory management. The “point of sale” concept provides no assistance for maintaining inventories that support serviceable pieces of equipment or towards reducing the number of orders that must be filled to maintain such an inventory.
A prior art teaching contained in U.S. Pat. No. 6,154,728 issued to Sattar, et al. (Sattar), discloses that the inventory management and control of many field replaceable units can be accomplished in a distributed inventory management scheme. Sattar requires that the field replaceable units input a status that can be tracked by the distributed inventory management system. Sattar requires that the field replaceable units must report a status as non-functional in order for the distributed inventory management system to understand that the inventory needs modification for that non-functional field replaceable unit. Therefore, the field replaceable unit must actually break down and the system that the field replaceable unit is in will, accordingly, also break down. Therefore, Sattar has a shortcoming in that it does not teach an inventory management system that can predict inventory needs prior to a breakdown of the replaceable parts within the system.
Numerous pieces of serviceable equipment exist within the prior art that have components that wear and consumables that become exhausted during normal use of the system. These systems, typically, require periodic maintenance to replace worn components and consumables that are actually exhausted or in danger of becoming exhausted. Typically, these complicated systems require service professionals such as field service engineers to repair or replace the components and consumables in these systems that wear during periods of normal use. In a number of these complicated systems, the period of time that the system is not working or, working at less than optimum performance, is critical. For many of these systems, it is intended to keep the system running continuously. A digital printing system is one such system. Minimizing down time is critical to the owners and operators of digital printers.
The prior art has recognized that it is important to count the number of uses that are applied to printing devices. One such prior art reference, U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,004 issued to Miller et al. (Miller), discloses a method and apparatus for normalizing the counting of sheets that are printed to compensate for varying sizes of sheets that are printed and provide a more accurate record of the wear on components within the system. However, Miller does not teach a system that will provide the operator with the specific knowledge of the wear on the components and consumables that become exhausted within the system, thus enabling the operator with the ability to perform maintenance on the system at optimum times. By not providing optimum timing for the replacement of components that wear during normal use, the resulting prints are not assured of being of optimum quality. Therefore, the teachings of Miller have a shortcoming in that the operator is not made aware of the current condition of the numerous parts within a printing system that will wear during use.
In view of the foregoing discussion there remains a need within the prior art for an operator controlled inventory management system that can anticipate inventory requirements, and there is also a desire to minimize the number of orders for replaceable components and consumables placed by owner/operators of serviceable equipment. There is a need within the art for a reduction in orders and corresponding shipments, which will result in numerous financial benefits to both the supplier and the customer.